{"id":231486,"date":"2026-05-14T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/231486\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T15:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:17:08","slug":"huge-fitness-facility-with-affordable-apartments-to-replace-downtown-nyc-blight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/231486\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge fitness facility with affordable apartments to replace Downtown NYC blight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lower Manhattan\u2019s most closely-watched, once-stalled development site is \u201cfit\u201d\u00a0 to rise.<\/p>\n

Chelsea Piers Fitness will launch a five-story, 76,000-square-foot health and wellness facility at 250 Water St., the one-acre empty lot that developer Tavros bought<\/a> from Seaport Entertainment Group \u00a0last year, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

The lease is the first of any kind for the ambitious project, which is scheduled to break ground next winter. It will boast 600 apartments, 25% of which are earmarked as \u201caffordable,\u201d as well as\u00a0commercial uses and abundant public outdoor space.<\/p>\n

Rendering of the 250 Water St. development\u2019s lower floors. The project is scheduled to break ground next winter. SOM\/Fogarty Finger<\/p>\n

Atlantic Retail will handle leasing for 35,000 square feet of ground-floor, high-ceiling store space. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The planned development will eliminate what has long been a blight on Downtown\u2019s East River side.<\/p>\n

Tavros and Atlas Capital bought the land for $150 million<\/a> in July. Howard Hughes Corp., which owned the adjacent Seaport, also owned 250 Water St. for years. It was stymied\u00a0trying to build anything as multiple lawsuits \u2014 mainly instigated by local residents who didn\u2019t want to lose their views \u2014 bogged things down.<\/p>\n

HHC ultimately prevailed \u00a0in court and hired\u00a0SOM to design the project\u2019s facade and massing plan. But SEG, which was spun off from HHC in 2024, decided to sell the ground, instead. Pershing Square Capital head Bill Ackman<\/a> is a large shareholder in both HHC and SEG but the companies say he has no active role in decision-making. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Tavros intends to use the basic SOM plan but has also\u00a0tapped\u00a0the \u00a0Fogarty Finger firm to be the design architect and architect of record.<\/p>\n

The project will boast 600 apartments, 25% of which, are earmarked as \u201caffordable,\u201d as well as\u00a0commercial uses and abundant public outdoor space. SOM\/Fogarty Finger<\/p>\n

Tavros partner Colin Rankowitz said the Chelsea Piers\u00a0signing fulfills the developer\u2019s \u201cvision to deliver a complete neighborhood asset\u201d with a \u201cbest-in-class fitness community destination.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Chelsea Piers Fitness CEO and co-founder David Tewksbury said the \u201cexpansive\u201d new location \u201cwill be full of light\u201d with \u201cbeautiful indoor and outdoors spaces.\u201d Above, Chelsea Piers along the west side of Manhattan. Chelsea Piers<\/p>\n

Chelsea Piers Fitness CEO and co-founder David Tewksbury said the \u201cexpansive\u201d new location \u201cwill be full of light,\u201d with \u201cbeautiful\u00a0indoor and outdoors spaces as well as a new home for our best-in-class fitness programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Privately owned Tavros is the development partner with Charney Companies in a 55-story condo tower in Long Island City and the five-building Gowanus Wharf campus in Brooklyn. It\u2019s also behind\u00a0 50 Ninth Avenue in the Meatpacking District, home to Rolls-Royce\u2019s luxury showroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lower Manhattan\u2019s most closely-watched, once-stalled development site is \u201cfit\u201d\u00a0 to rise. Chelsea Piers Fitness will launch a five-story,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[288,10372,2361,9,56,63,65,64,1491,3274,293],"class_list":["post-231486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-business","tag-chelsea-piers","tag-leases","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-real-estate","tag-realty-check","tag-south-street-seaport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}